


i am the danger

by wndrw8



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Super Angst, completely uneccessary, some smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:37:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3759964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wndrw8/pseuds/wndrw8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Want for something you’ve been denied so often in this harsh life and it becomes a fixation. She and Rick and Daryl are all the same now—they grab hold of things and cling to them like people possessed."</p><p>future Alexandria fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

 

It happened about a year ago. 

They were on a routine run, the three of them: her, Daryl and Rick. It was spring and the air was cool. The trees had just started to bud and the smell of fresh grass and dirt rode along the breeze. Alexandria was theirs and things felt back to normal in a way they hadn’t since the prison. 

They approached an old parts warehouse, looking for backup generators, salvage parts for the cars. 

It was the three of them and they got cocky. 

Rick hung an oil lantern up on the wall to illuminate the space while they worked. It flashed over the cold, concrete floor in shadows. They were joking, Carol smiling, when walkers started banging into the door behind them. It sounded like there were a lot but Daryl wasn’t concerned. “I can lead ’em away,” he said, holding up his crossbow. 

Then the door pushed open.

Things happened quickly after that. An undead chorus filled the gigantic space as a mass of them swarmed in. Some went to the right, after Daryl, and the rest went to the left, after her and Rick. 

A row of oil drums got pushed over and spilled. She could smell it, hear the viscous liquid pouring out onto the floor. 

That’s when the lantern fell and flames engulfed the area.

She remembers little about what followed. Rick had his arm around her waist, leading her through heat and smoke. Then they were back on the grass and the fire had somehow consumed the warehouse. Walkers stumbled out after them, burning. 

She cried for Daryl but he never came. After the walkers petered out, she tried to go in after him but Rick held her back. He grabbed her around her waist as she lunged, screaming at the fire that leapt into the sky. She couldn’t think, could barely even breathe. All she knew in the moment was the heat and the panic and the feeling of Oh God, this isn’t right. 

“You’ll die,” Rick kept saying. He was crying, too. “Don’t.”

That’s when her anger turned on him and she started hitting. First in the face and when he grabbed her wrists, she started slapping at his chest. Just anguish and sick panic, like the day Sofia stumbled out of that barn. 

Finally she collapsed and let him hold her, cried until she couldn’t speak or move.

They returned with help after the fire died out. A group of them looked through the debris for a body, for track marks, but the flames had taken down almost everything that wasn’t steel. It was just char and pieces of leftover metal, coated in layers of bubbled ash. 

They searched the area but found nothing.

“If he got out, he’ll find his way back,” Rick said. 

But she knew deep down Daryl never left the warehouse.

+++

Months passed. 

Eugene died. Tara, too. Michonne was killed protecting Rosita and that hit the group the hardest. What hope was there if this plague had claimed their two best—the archer and the samurai? 

Rick got more paranoid after that. He started sleeping very little and manning the guard tower more and more on his own. Morgan helped arming the rest of the group, teaching them how to fight and survive. Sasha, too.

Carol took over in other areas. 

She and Rick started spending more time together. No one else understood what they were going through. It was just them and their grief and the work. Always the work. She started spending the night in his house and taking care of Judith. When the girl began speaking coherent sentences, they became inseparable.

The seasons changed. Rick grew more ruthless than ever. The only time he ever let his guard down was some nights in bed, when he’d draw in close to her, not to protect but to be protected, and let her pull him to her breast, her hands smoothing through his hair. 

That’s how things began. 

It made sense, them being together. They were the leaders of the place, after all. They were the ones left after Michonne and Daryl…

It went okay for a while after that. Until winter started.

That’s when Daryl came back.


	2. ONE

ONE

 

Daryl’s hair is in a ponytail when she sees him again for the first time. He’s shaved his beard. It’s clear he’s been somewhere with access to soap and cleaning agents, though most of his old clothes are gone, the leather vest included. Now he wears one made of denim with a patch near the left shoulder. White and pink colored burn marks mar his hands and the edges of his face, but he’s still handsome. 

He’s Daryl. 

But there’s something in his eyes—a hollowness. 

He won’t talk much about what happened, except to say that some people found him in the wreckage a few feet away from the warehouse and took him in. Nursed him back to health. He says they tried to force him to stay but he wouldn’t. 

“So how’d you get here, then?” Rick asks.

“Walked.”

“Walked how far?”

“Far,” he says.

They try to get more of a cohesive story but Daryl won’t budge. 

+++

After a few days, they get him started on runs and catching food. He seems to fit better that way—having access to the outside. Everything feels like it should go back to normal, but it doesn’t. Something has changed within Daryl. He looks like he feels out of place. Like he doesn’t trust anyone anymore.

It’s worse when he’s around Rick.

“You two are brothers,” she says one night. They’re standing side by side, washing dishes in the kitchen. Rick’s retired early and already his snores filter down from upstairs. “You remember everything. Don’t you?”

He’s a little bit skinnier than before. Tanner, too, except for the burn marks that linger, raised. 

She looks at him and gets a flood of heat between her legs. Then the guilt comes, and the anger. Now that he’s back, all she wants is to be with him, really be with him, but there’s one tiny complication… 

“Remember most things,” he says. “Remember your little girl.”

“And Beth?”

“Andrea. Merle.”

“So what is it then?”

He stops washing and wipes his hands on his pants, turning to look at her. He’s different in this way now—he looks at people full on. Whereas before, he’d turn sideways, letting their gaze glance off him, now he takes it head on. Like he’s not afraid anymore. “People that found me,” he says. “They weren’t no good.”

She tenses. 

“Saw some bad things.”

A breeze claws through the edges of the window over the sink. She shudders. “I thought as much. You’re different.”   
He goes to turn away, but she catches his wrist, pulling it to her chest. Her fingers trace over the burns on his hands, the splotches that spill down his wrist. His cheeks redden but he doesn’t pull away. He’s warm. Faintly wet from drying the dishes. He smells like soap and cinnamon from the dessert they had earlier. 

“We looked for you.”

“You did, huh?” He stares at her. He feels a little like Merle right now—brazen and not backing down. “You stop after you started sharin’ his bed?”

Carol stiffens. After a moment, she lets his hand drop and turns away. She unplugs the drain, watching the soapy water dissipate. 

“How’d that even happen… you two?”

She sighs. Her eyes flutter shut for a moment and she stills, trying to force the stress from her body. It’s a calming exercise Morgan’s been working on with her. Focusing. Being acutely aware of your muscles—the tension, the slack, the pain. Going through each one and slowly allowing them to relax.

It takes time, he told her.

She opens her eyes and with a fingertip, reaches out to smooth the hem of Daryl’s shirt. He smells of old soap and sweat and salt. His body radiates heat. That’s something that will always be a part of Daryl, no matter how long he’s gone or what kind of people he meets up with in the hiatus.

“You have a bed,” she says. “Basement room. If you want it.”

She wipes her hands on her pants and puts the rest of the dishes up. Daryl doesn’t say anything. She thinks he’ll storm out, maybe say something mean. 

He just stands there. 

But when she turns to go upstairs, he grabs her arm, stares down at her. She’s really taken back by how good the ponytail looks on him. Now she can really see his eyes. “What?” 

Daryl’s gaze flickers and then he pulls her roughly against him, slipping an arm around the small of her back in an embrace. She’s stiff at first, shocked. But eventually she lets her arms go around him and hugs him back.   
Upstairs, a wood plank creaks. The buzz of the bathroom light comes on, indicating Carl’s awake, and Judith will likely follow. 

Carol withdraws. A soft pang of discomfort registers deep in her belly. She becomes faintly aware of the two distinct worlds she has built, and how jumbled they seem when put together. “I hope you stay tonight, Daryl.” 

Judith’s footsteps echo from upstairs. They come in spurts and then many at once. Like a baby goat prancing. “Got a little one on the loose up there.” 

“I know. She’s an asskicker, that one.”

Daryl nods.

She smiles back. 

But it doesn’t feel okay yet. 

It doesn’t feel right. 

+++

Rick and Daryl leave for a run together the next day. They’re gone for longer than normal, and Carol can barely focus on her inventory at the armory. She counts the same box of ammunition four times before giving up and heading over to the school to get Judith. At two and a half, the girl already has quite a mouth. She’s been punished twice already for cussing and threatening another child. 

Rick’s fault.

Though Carol knows she’s no angel, either.

“Where’s Daddy?” Judith asks as they walk back to the house. Her small fingers curl around the top of Carol’s sweater, playing with the fraying hem. 

“He’s outside,” Carol says. “He’ll be back for dinner.”

“Where’s Carl?”

“At school, silly. You know that.”

“I want to tell Daddy something.”

Carol shifts the girl in her arms. She smells like glue and there’s some lingering stickiness on her fingers. She hopes they were working on a construction project earlier. “Daddy’s not here. You’re stuck with me.”

Judith considers, then leans forward and kisses Carol’s cheek. “We can make cookies?”

“Not today, pumpkin.”

Judith exhales and her breath smells of applesauce. The girl is smart, cunning even. She knows she’s cute and can work a room for what she wants. This pleases Carol because surviving outside of these walls means knowing how to entrap an audience. Judith can already read people exceptionally well.

When they finally return home, she gets Judith washed up and ready for dinner. An hour later, Carl comes over to check in before immediately heading out to a friend’s house. He spends a lot of time gone now, being a full-fledged teenager. But he still does things like check in. Help with dishes sometimes. Clean his room without being asked. 

Carl is not a bad kid. 

But there are moments when he reminds her too much of his father. 

Rick arrives at dusk. He’s covered in walker blood and insides but not visibly harmed. His gaze is downcast as he walks into their bedroom and takes off his boots. Carol stands, facing the bed where she methodically breaks apart and reassembles their weapons, cleaning them all with oil and a rag. 

“Daddy!” Judith calls from the floor where she plays with a set of pencils and a notepad.

Carol looks behind him. The house is silent. Quiet in the arrival of darkness. “Where’s Daryl?”

“He went for a walk. Inside the walls,” he says. “Just… you know how he gets.”

“It didn’t go well?”

Rick strips off his shirt and reaches for a clean one. “It’s… different, Carol.”

She stops. “What do you mean?”

“It didn’t feel right.”

Rick leans down to pick up Judith. She squirms in his arms for a moment before placing a kiss on his cheek and motioning to be set down again. He puts the girl down and turns back to Carol. She starts to feel desperate. “Make it work,” she says. “Do whatever you need to do. Just make it work.”

He touches her forearm. “I’m gonna. It’ll just take time.”

She turns back to the bed. Pieces of her rifle lie in bunches across the comforter. Rick sidles in behind her. She feels the heat of his body and the tense, nervous energy he always radiates now. 

“We’re not gonna lose him again,” he says. “I love Daryl as much as you do.”

Carol tries not to scoff. Her hands tense over the rag she’s using as Rick’s arms go around her waist, pulling her flat against him. The truth is, Rick doesn’t know anything about love. He knows what pleases him, what makes things easier for him and his group. And while he does care about her, he’s not in love with her like she was with Daryl.

It’s not the same and it never will be. 

+++

Thankfully, Daryl returns for dinner. He stays to help Rick clean up the dishes and even talks to Carl for a bit before going outside for a smoke. The winter air is too cool to be out after dark and on a few very early mornings, she’s woken to frost on the windows. 

Still, she follows him.

There will never be a time that she won’t follow him. 

“How was the run today?” she asks. 

Smoke billows into the air, thickened by the clouds of their breath. It smells sharp. Like metal and impending snow. Like smoke. “Alright. Didn’t find much.”

“I think Rick just wanted some alone time with you.”

Daryl sucks in on the cigarette and she feels that tug again. It starts in her chest and travels down to the juncture of her thighs in a matter of seconds. He’s still Daryl, but it feels like he’s less scared. There’s nothing holding him back now. “Ain’t the same,” he says.

She exhales. “You were gone. We moved on.”

“Yeah, you keep sayin’ that.”

Heat licks the back of her neck, even though she’s shivering. “Don’t,” she says. Her throat constricts. “I mourned you, Daryl.” 

He stabs the cigarette out on the porch railing. It leaves an ashy stain, dim in the faint light. Slowly, he peels out of the denim vest he’s wearing and drapes it around her shoulders, tugging her closer to him in the process. 

Her breath catches in her throat. She swallows thickly, trying not to let the throbbing between her legs distract her. 

“Your hair’s long,” he says. “It’s nice.”

She shouldn’t, but in this moment, Carol imagines Rick gone. No one but her and Daryl for the rest of the end of the world. “Judith likes it,” she replies.

Daryl just keeps on looking at her and she relents, places her hands on his stomach, smoothing over his shirt, feeling the heat of his body so close to hers. “I like it, too.”

“Daryl—”

“I’m gonna go for a walk around,” he says. “Maybe take a shift in the tower.”

The heat of his vest works through her skin like a shot of whiskey. Warm and spreading. She lets her hands drop. Her throat is tight with pressure. “I don’t want you to leave again.” 

He looks at her. A small smirk tugs on the edges of his lips. He is fresh and dangerous in a way that feels ruining. “If you want me…” he says, “guess I’ll stay around.”

+++

They meet on the porch for the next couple of nights. It gets better. The tension between them ebbs away and they begin to circle back to what they were before. But there’s still something that’s changed in him. He looks her in the eye more and he’s brazen, touching her like he wouldn’t have dared before. 

But maybe that’s what being near death does. Roots you. Makes you yearn for things like you didn’t before. Makes you free.

The problem is him and Rick. 

“You ain’t gotta tell me about Abraham,” Daryl’s saying. He and Rick are in the backyard, near the wall. They pace one another with stiff shoulders and mouths drawn taut. Carol and Judith stand inside, watching from the kitchen. “I lived here before. Remember?”

“I’m not sayin’ that, Daryl. That’s not where I was goin’ with this at all.”

“Daddy’s yelling.” Judith says, munching on a bowl of peas. “Why are they being mean?"

“Because they’re silly.”

“Why?”

Carol puts down the shirt she’s mending. It’s Daryl’s. She goes to stand next to the window where Judith hovers, eating sloppily. Stray peas drop onto the floor. “They’re brothers. It’s like you and Carl. You know how you fight sometimes? It’s the same thing.”

They watch a little longer until Daryl heads off with a fling of his hand and a muttered curse. In the silence that follows, Rick looks up at Carol. Their eyes meet for a brief second.

She opens the screen door and urges the little girl onto the grass. “Go to your father, Judith.” 

Then she grabs her sweater and hurries out the front door. 

They’re several yards down the block before she finally catches up with him. 

“Daryl,” she calls. She grabs at his elbow but he pulls out of her grasp. 

“Don’t.”

“Just talk to me.”

“What’s the point? You’re with him, ain’t you?”

“Daryl, stop.”

He keeps walking. Fast. His shoulders boulder forward, his eyes locked on the street. He’s got this fire in his eyes, raging but eerily calm. She knows that look. She’s seen it in Rick, right before he’s done horrible things. 

Carol keeps pace with him until they reach the tool shed behind the armory. Then she pulls him to the side, digging her nails into him when he tries to push her away. They stumble across the grass, a tangle of push and pull. Thankfully, it’s late in the day and there’s no one around. With the chill in the air, most have been keeping inside.

She pushes the back door open and shoves Daryl in. “What the hell is going on with you?”

He exhales and it sounds ragged in the small space. It’s dimly lit. Warmer than outside but still cold and it smells of dirt and cedar wood. “Nothin’,” he says. “Just wonder if I shoulda come back.”

Oh god. Carol tries not to roll her eyes. She rubs her lips, thinking back to how she dealt with him at the farm. It seemed simpler then. Maybe because she had no one else who needed her. He was her sole focus. 

Maybe, in some ways, that’s what he needs. 

“What do you want?” she asks. “You want your own house? I’ll make it happen.”

He stares at her.

“Tell me and I can do it, Daryl. Please.”

He keeps on staring. The bravado’s deflated, the anger reigned in. She can see a bit of how he was before. “What I want…” he barks out a laugh. 

Carol shifts as heat rages throughout her body. “Just say it.” 

He licks his lips, staring down at her. Now that he’s clean shaven there, she’s free to notice what a nice mouth he has. She always thought about it before, but not up close like this. She imagined him from afar—lips ghosting over her. Now that she’s this close, she thinks his lips are the kind meant to be battered.

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even bat an eye. They’ve never been this close together before, not face to face at least.   
Her heart races. She is not thinking of Rick now. Nor Judith, nor the walls or the community or her role in things. For once in her life, she is not thinking at all. She is just wanting. Daryl’s always brought that out in her. 

It’s what makes him dangerous. 

Carol reaches out and touches his shoulder, his neck. His pulse races under her hand and despite the cold, a faint sheen of sweat coats his skin. His long hair tickles her fingers. 

Their first kiss is mean and long and desperate. It feels like the way things are supposed to be. Like alcohol burning through her veins—all hot and sinfully consuming. Nothing similar to the love she has with the man who shares her bed. 

This, she thinks, is unique to her and Daryl. 

But who knows?

Maybe Rick knew love like this once. Maybe that’s all anyone can have of it—just once—and everything before and after is just a poor substitute.


	3. Chapter 3

TWO

 

When she gets back to the house, Rick’s already in bed. “You find him?”

She strips down to a tank top, scoots under the covers next to him. “He wouldn’t talk,” she says carefully. 

“I don’t like how this is going.” 

They lie next to one another, staring up at the ceiling. The house is cold. Carol’s layered the blankets on the kids’ beds and their own—piles of woven multi-colored quilts sewn by people who are now gone. 

“I don’t know if I can trust him anymore.”

“You can,” she assures. “He’s just… been through something. Remember how you were after Lori?”

He quiets, then rubs his face. “You think the people that found him did something?”

“Maybe. He’s scared. He thought we abandoned him.”

Rick sighs and shifts next to her so he’s lying on his side. He appraises her. Not in a sexual way but in a tactical sense. That’s what Rick is now—all tactics and battle plans. For them, it was never about romance. It was about survival and to survive meant leaning on each other every once in a while. 

Carol rolls on her side so they are face to face. They stay like that for a short while. Quiet. The wind snakes in through the window above them, frigid wisps of air trailing down the headboard. 

Then Rick reaches out. His hand comes down on her neck like it has so many times in the past few years and he traces the skin there, his shortened nails soothing. She closes her eyes and lets the sensation lull her.

It’s easy with Rick. She can’t forget that. They’re on the same page and they have been since reaching Alexandria.   
But then the pressure from his hand tightens. She can feel his nails, enough of them to be uncomfortable, and the pads of his callused fingertips. She opens her eyes to find him staring. Staring so hard he doesn’t blink. “Carol,” he says, his voice taking on an edge, “you’d tell me… if something were wrong.”

She forces a smile. “Nothing’s wrong. Relax.”

Rick’s grip on her loosens. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something when a muffled thump comes from down the hall. 

Carol stills. Her gaze flickers to the door as a sudden cries pierce the silence. 

Judith. 

“Shit,” Rick says.

They both sit up, reaching for their clothes. “She probably fell off the bed again trying to get out,” Carol says. 

“Same thing happened last night when you were on watch.” 

As soon as Judith transitioned from her crib, they put up a child bar on the twin to try to keep her from escaping, but it hasn’t helped much. Judith is a child that can’t be controlled by anybody or anything. 

Carol is proud of her spirit.

She envies it.

“I took the bar off,” Rick admits. “Wasn’t doin’ any good.”

He follows her into the hallway, moving quietly. Usually it’s Rick that deals with any nighttime problems, but with his erratic schedule, she’s been dealing with Judith more frequently and it shows. When they reach the baby room, the girl raises her hands and cries for Carol. 

Judith is so beautiful, even with her hair mussed and her cheeks splotchy from crying.

She has Lori’s eyes. 

“What is it?” Carol asks. “Did you have to go to the bathroom?”

“No,” Judith wails pathetically from the floor next to the bed. “I just… I just want water.”

She hears Rick groan behind her. “I’ll go,” he says. 

Carol reaches down and plucks the little girl off the floor. She is featherweight in her arms. Precious and delicate and sometimes terrifying. It scares her how much she looks forward to seeing this face every morning and every night. 

“Stop that,” Carol says softly. “You’re not hurt. You’ll get your water.”

Judith hiccups, wiping her face. In certain moments, she appears very somber, like her brother. She has the calm assuredness of an adult. She reasons. Carol smoothes back her hair and places her in the twin bed once more, pulling the sheets up around her shoulders. 

“You have to stop climbing out of bed. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I need water.”

“Pfft.” Carol pinches Judith’s nose. “You just didn’t want to go to sleep.”

That brings a small smile to the girl’s face. She reaches out and touches Carol’s hand. “I sleeped,” she tries. “Before.”  
Rick comes back with a sippy cup full of water and hands it to the girl. Judith brings it to her mouth and gulps like she’s dying. She blinks, tears on her eyelashes reflecting the dim light like crystals. 

“You okay now, munchkin?” Rick asks. 

“Mm,” Judith hums. 

Carol cranes her neck, turning. “I’ve got her, Rick.”

His eyes meet hers. There’s a moment of anger, but it disappears just as quickly as it came and he steps around her to brush his hand over his daughter’s head. Judith closes her eyes. Her muted gulps are the only sound in the room as Rick recedes. 

It’s rare to find peace like this. 

If things change, she might never be able to find it again.

“That’s enough,” Carol says, and takes the cup away. “Rest now.”

Judith wiggles deeper into the covers. She purses her lips. Her hair splays across the pillow and Carol brushes it back. A warm feeling creeps up in her chest. 

This child. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to take this child and run. 

While Rick is sometimes a decent father, he largely absent minded with his children, Judith especially. There, but not there. He’s like that with most of them now. And Daryl isn’t perfect but maybe he would be there? Maybe he would try harder. Maybe he would look at this girl and see her truth and her beauty and her cunning. 

But, no. She stops herself as soon as the thought enters her mind. 

She can’t just substitute people in and out of her life. They aren’t interchangeable. She and Daryl will never be something because they waited too long. Life happened and the moment passed. 

Still, she wants. 

Carol rises. 

But instead of going back to bed, she locks herself in the bathroom and cries. 

+++

The next day passes in a haze. She works ten hours straight in the armory, inventorying and cleaning, reassembling, and teaching a brief course on gun safety to some of the residents who have less experience handling weapons. Rick has Judith today which means she’s free. 

For a while, she thinks about heading over to Abe’s and sitting down with him for a drink, but decides against it.

As much as she loves Abe, this is not something she can talk about with others. Like many of the things that have happened since the end of the world, this is something she will have to soldier through on her own.

“You done?”

She looks up. Through the dim light in the basement armory, she makes out a faint silhouette on the stairs. “Daryl?”

“Hey. You wanna talk?”

The air smells of metal and gun powder and gun oil. It’s warmer down here than it is outside, if only by a few degrees. It’s not bad enough that she can see her breath, but still uncomfortable. She tugs her sweater up around her neck. “About what?”

He starts down the stairs. His weight creaks the brittle wood. Something about the sway of his body… the way he stands so sure. The discourse inside her head goes quiet. 

“You know what,” he says. 

She swallows. “I don’t feel like talking.”

Daryl approaches her slowly. It’s still so strange for her to see him like this, all clean and with his hair pulled back, no crossbow. It’s strange to be able to see his eyes. He’s either more confident revealing himself or better at hiding what he’s feeling. 

He walks right up to her, practically stalking. Confident. Predatory. He scans the wall of weapons. “Huh,” he says.  
She’s suddenly so turned on she can barely move. “You into guns now?”

“I can look, can’t I?”

His gaze moves down to her and she feels him scanning the length of her body. She swallows. This is so different—she’s so used to the push and pull with him, the way he never says exactly what’s on his mind. “Well, if we aren’t gonna talk…” 

Daryl looks down at her and smirks, pulling the rifle she was re-assembling out of her hands. He sets it on the countertop behind her. His face is within inches of hers. It should feel threatening, but it doesn’t. This… this is just pent up energy.

She knows because she feels it, too. Like a live wire stretching between them. 

She puts a hand on his chest. Erratic breaths rise and fall beneath her palm. He’s nervous. Excited, maybe. He didn’t say anything after she kissed him the other day, just sort of stared at her and then let her leave. 

Carol’s breathing has quickened now, too, and she has to reassure herself. Everything will be fine. They will control this, keep it between them. They will make things work. That’s what they do—find space for one another when there is none. 

Nothing bad has to happen. 

“That little girl…” she begins. She leans into him, feeling his hands slide over the muscles in her back, his palms warm. “She needs me to stay in her life.”

He exhales against her neck. His breath is warm and so are his lips as they kiss a pattern across her throat, his hand coming to rest on the base of her neck, tilting her chin back for access. He takes his time. They press together and in the cool air of the basement room she starts to feel hot. “You ain’t gonna lose her,” he says, low. “But I ain’t gonna lose you again, either.”

Carol closes her eyes. His hand tangles in her hair. He runs his fingers through the lengthening locks like he’s never touched something so reverent in his life and that’s when she starts to get scared. 

Deep down she knows once they start this, she won’t be able to stop. 

He pushes her up against the countertop. Curling her fingers around the edges, she lifts herself up onto it. He rubs up against her, forcing himself between her legs. His kisses grow deeper, more frantic. She can feel his hardness through his jeans. 

His hands are everywhere. 

“You sure about this?” she husks. 

He smirks, reaches down to unbutton her pants. 

His hands are moving fast, much faster than she ever thought they would, and by the time he’s got her shirt and pants off, she realizes this is going to end much quicker than she wants it to. He has little patience, or finesse, not that she really needs either right now. She’s soaked already and he hasn’t even gotten her completely nude yet.   
His hand slips beneath her underwear. 

Who is she kidding? He could eyefuck her into an orgasm. All it would take would be his gaze on her and she could easily work herself into oblivion in a matter of seconds. It’s shameful. 

Carol grinds into him. He’s fumbling with the last layer between them—her panties—but once they come to rest at her ankles, he thrusts inside her immediately. 

How long has she waited for this? Years? Too many to count. She’s seen her children die over and over, along with her friends and could’ve been lovers. She’s seen men confront ghosts and now Daryl, resurrected. 

The old Daryl Dixon would never have touched her so brazenly like this, pumping into her in the dim light of a room where anyone could see them. He would never have opened himself to her with Rick already there.

He must’ve died and come back. 

Come back just for this.


	4. Chapter 4

THREE

 

The next week, Rick and Daryl only get worse. It’s dangerous, especially considering that by then she and Daryl have fucked in a) the armory, b) the guard tower, and c) the ruins right outside the wall. 

But she isn’t scared. They can handle this. 

Right?

It all culminates in the communal kitchen one night. The town has started eating there so supplies can be conserved until winter ends. It won’t be much longer—already the air warms; the sun stays out later and the sky starts to blue. The trees perk. 

Halfway through their dinner, Rick tells her he wants to start colonizing the land a few miles north. They are low on canned goods and haven’t seen large game in weeks. He thinks there will be more supplies there and possibly less walkers. 

Daryl’s solution is to send someone out on an overnight hunting trip. “No need for new territory,” he grunts from across the table. The scent of salt and cooked meat lingers in the air. It smells good but Carol can’t make herself eat.

“Around here’s been used up, Daryl. There’s nothing left.”

“’S risky. You don’t know who’s out there.”

Rick leans in. “Hell, it’s risky to go outside at all. Everything’s a risk.”

They go back and forth like that for a few minutes. Rick asks Carol what she thinks and she tries to take middle ground but that only makes things worse. Their voices escalate. When Rick says something about rednecks and deer, Daryl stands up so quick he almost knocks his stew over. 

Rick rises, too, and then Carol. 

“Hey,” she says. She’s not even sure who she’s addressing anymore. “Sit down. This isn’t the time.”

Unfortunately, neither is listening.

They’re locked in position. Nothing she can do. 

Daryl makes the first move. He grabs Rick’s ear with one hand and punches him in the cheek with the other. Then Rick swings, cursing. He hits Daryl so hard in the mouth that it draws blood. Then again in the cheek. 

People are staring now, whispering. It makes her nervous. Leaders can’t be caught acting like this and she’s worked too hard to have people listen to her, to be able to run things the way they need to be. 

Somehow Carol manages to get between them. She puts a hand on Daryl’s chest. Shoves him away. Rick’s at her back, his hand hot through the fabric of her shirt and she feels these men like weights on her soul. “Stop it,” she barks.

Daryl glares, but listens. His arms fall to his sides as he pants. Blood weaves through his teeth and she so wishes she could smooth back his hair, touch his bloodied lip and tell him that they will find a way to make all this work. 

“Everything okay over here?” someone asks. 

No, everything’s not okay.

It won’t be. It hasn’t been since the day of that fire.

+++

Daryl storms off, leaving Rick and Carol clean up their dinner plates. Afterwards, they retreat to the pantry to talk.   
It’s dark inside. Blissfully quiet. Lately Carol’s been feeling everything so loud, her mind on a constant buzz, and she wants so badly to just shut everything down. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong. Maybe he’s trying to warn us about the people that took him.”

Rick paces in front of her. “If he was gonna warn us, he’d give specifics.”

“Maybe he can’t? It’s hard for him to be rational about what happened out there, Rick.”

Rick stops, turns to face her. He’s got on a flannel shirt today, something Daryl might’ve worn a few years ago, and the top few buttons are undone. He sidles up to her. “You apologizing for him?”

“I don’t think I need to do that.”

A snort. “Who’s side are you on, here?”

Carol stiffens. A soft glaze of sweat has dried on the back of her neck. It prickles as she tilts her head. “We’re all on the same side, Rick.”

His breath falls over her, trembling a loose lock of hair. He puts his hand on her shoulder, then moves it up so he’s cupping her neck. 

She can feel it now—not his love, but his longing for her. Rick is not capable of feeling love anymore, but he’s riddled with longing. He’s like she was all those years ago. Terrified of being alone. The demands of making these awful decisions and watching loved ones die over and over is not something one can bare by themselves.

He needs her. 

“Rick, come on. You know we are.”

“I don’t think so,” he says and his hand drops. “Not anymore.” 

+++

That night, Carol sleeps on the floor in Judith’s room. Wrapped in a soft quilt, she looks out the window. There are few stars out and barely any luminescence. Carl didn’t come home for dinner, instead opting to spend the night at Marcus’s house as he so often does. Daryl is gone too and Rick’s holed himself up at Abe’s, as far away from her as he could get. 

Everyone’s fled. 

(So she will do whatever it takes to keep this one little child.) 

When she can’t get to sleep, Carol sneaks downstairs into the kitchen. The other day, Abe gave her a mason jar of a new moonshine he’s been mixing and she wants to try some before Rick either drinks it all or Carl pilfers some for his friends. 

She’s reaching for a clean glass when movement to her right stops her. 

Her heart thunders. She turns, but it’s just Daryl. He’s in his hunting gear, clean except for a touch of sweat matting the hair on his forehead. “Jesus,” she exhales. “What are you doing?”

He shifts the new crossbow Morgan found for him over his right shoulder. “Was gonna go hunt,” he says. “Needed a drink first.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

He shrugs, stares at her. 

“You shouldn’t be out in the dark.”

“You tellin’ me what to do again?”

She bites her lip, feeling worn in her threadbare t-shirt. “Does it matter? You and Rick don’t listen much anyway.” She reaches past him to remove the mason jar from the fridge, brings it to her lips. The liquid burns her throat going down and she coughs. 

Daryl lingers. 

“What?” she asks. “I’m not sharing.”

“You’re mad.”

“You made a scene.”

“Rick’s wrong.”

“So?” She brushes past him, headed towards the stairs. “That’s not how things are handled. We have to seem like we’re together in this.” 

Daryl follows her. His shoes make soft squeaking sounds against the floor. He is so noisy, so out of his element. She wonders if there’s any way he will ever fit here. “Don’t,” he says. “Look, I’m sorry.”

She turns to look at him. His eyes are shaded by the dim lighting of the room but his posture speaks volumes—tense and haggard, his shoulders rolled forward like he’s about to take a hit. She feels the tension, too. It’s why she couldn’t sleep. This and everything else has been keeping her up at night and she’s not sure how much more she can take.

For the first time in a long time, she has no idea what do to. What the right thing is. 

“Come downstairs.” 

Carol stills. Her breath catches in her chest. “Don’t make me laugh.”

He eyes her. She thinks maybe her glare alone could scare him away but then he’s stepping closer, his hand falling onto the curve of her waist and the glare falls away almost immediately. 

He lets his hand trail to the small of her back and she is anchored to him. 

+++

She’s lost her mind.

Only a crazy person would fuck someone in a house they share with another man. But this is how Carol feels right now—delusional, sick. Want for something you’ve been denied so often in this harsh life and it becomes a fixation. She and Rick and Daryl are all the same now—they grab hold of things and cling to them like people possessed. 

But Rick is not here now.

Daryl hums between her legs. He tongues at her core, his mouth hot and unrelenting. Her heel digs into his back as she arches, gripping the sides of the washing machine she’s perched upon. The cold surface pebbles her skin. Flurries of pleasure like electricity pulse down her thighs, curling in the center of her belly. 

They could never really be without Rick. He’s integral. Before all this, it was the three of them and it can be like that again. 

The muscles in her feet contract. 

She grabs him by the back of his hair, dragging him up to her. Kisses him hard. Her thighs squeak as she presses closer to him on the edge of the machine, legs tightening around him as he struggles out of his jeans. 

But she can’t have Rick anymore. Not when things are like this. 

Daryl’s hand goes to her breast as he frees himself and thrusts into her, kneading her flesh to the point of pain. She leans into him, her legs locked around his waist. He’s covered in sweat. It bleeds onto her as his breath falls across her neck. 

They’ve gone too far now and she’s not sure how she let it happen. 

Didn’t she once believe that they could keep this under control? 

Didn’t she trust herself to make the right decisions? 

All the certainty Carol had slips away in an instant and the weight of her choices come shuddering down around her.

+++

“I’m going on a run tomorrow,” she says a week later. Rick has gone back to sleeping in the bed with her, but there’s a wall around him. She can feel it, see it in his eyes. He’s veiled. “Just around the perimeter of the walls.”

He rifles through the drawers for clean socks. “Anyone goin’ with you?”

“I’ve done it a million times, Rick.” She forces a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

His face seems to contain genuine concern, which is nice. Sometimes he really can care. She likes that about him. She likes that he does what he needs to without worrying about the consequences. It’s also what scares her the most about him. 

Rick is one of her closest friends. 

(It should’ve been left at that.)

He lumbers over, turning her so they’re face to face. “Going out there is dangerous. No matter how many times you’ve done it.”

His hand slips to her waist, smoothing over her hip, and it sends a shiver across her skin. He’s particularly drawn to her hips and neck, always has been. That’s where his hands constantly go when they’re together. Rick is a man obsessed and once he focuses in on something it’s impossible to steer him away.

“What are you thinking?” he asks. 

She disentangles from him. Looks up and sees the tension edging out across his bottom lip. “I think… I think we need some space for a bit.”

His brow creases. “Space?”

“Yeah.”

He shifts. “Explain that to me.”

Carol heats but bites her tongue. Assesses, evaluates. It’s all a game with Rick. She just has to play her hand right. “This,” she says, “the way things are now… You ever think they should’ve gone differently? Like maybe you should’ve ended up with Sasha or someone else?”

His face hardens. Crimson tints his cheeks as his hand drops and he turns away from her. “Didn’t you tell me once you can’t have it both ways?”

Shit. 

She goes cold.

He knows. 

“Because you can’t, Carol. You can’t have both.” 

Carol steadies herself on the dresser. Forces herself to breathe. 

This talking, this calm rationality, won’t last long. Rick’s always been a little unmoored. They couldn’t see it in Atlanta, but after the walkers overran the farm, she knew. A little stress would breach and splinter. 

“I love you, Rick. After this past year… there’s no way I couldn’t.”

He looks her right in the eye. His face is calm, skin smooth, slightly tanned. He is so handsome right now that it almost feels unfair. “Decide,” he says. “You’ve always been good at that.”

He leaves and she feels like collapsing. 

Of course you can’t have it both ways. That’s not how the world worked before and it sure as hell isn’t the way it works now. 

+++

“Just stay away from him until I can figure this out,” Carol says the next day. She and Daryl are outside the walls, collecting roots for herbal remedies and teas. It’s sunny. Warmer than it has been. She’s a foot deep in a thicket of briar bushes. Daryl stands about a dozen feet away, the new crossbow slung over his shoulder, peering out into the budding greenery.

“Can’t,” he says. “It’s Rick’s fucken town.”

“I’ll get you a house. Away from his. I just need time.”

Daryl grunts. “What if you can’t figure it out,” he says. “What then?”

Her stomach tightens. She reaches further into the thicket, kneeling so thorny vines encase her. It smells of hickory and cedar wood. The leaves are cold beneath her hands but still blooming. On that cusp between the darkened slumber of winter and life and color of early spring. “I don’t know, Daryl.” 

“You want to be with me. Right?”

She shifts. “I wouldn’t risk it if I didn’t.”

He makes a humming sound and moves behind the shade of an old oak. Carol screws on the lid of the jar. She’s about to stand up when movement in the bushes startles her. She drops the container. Goes for the knife on her belt but it’s too late. She’s kneeling, vulnerable. The greenery has hidden the green cargo pants, the tan t-shirt.

Carol looks up into his eyes and her stomach drops. “Rick, don’t.”

Rick stares down at her, eyes wide and glossed and crazy. “It’s better you’re not awake for this,” he says, and then brings the butt of his gun down on the side of her head.


	5. Chapter 5

FOUR

 

When she comes to, sunlight obscures her vision. She blinks, sees blobs of colors—the pale blue of the sky, the tan of the trees. As her vision clears, she becomes aware of a grunting sound, almost like hard sighing. The soft thud of knuckles against flesh. She’d know that sound anywhere. It brings a sick feeling to her gut.

Carol sits up. Pain prickles the side of her head and when she brings her fingertips to the spot, there’s blood. 

She stills. Closes her eyes. 

One muscle at a time, she remembers Morgan saying. Focus on the tension. Go through each body part and allow the muscles there to relax.

I can’t.

You can, he said. You’ve survived this long, Carol. All the rest is child’s play.

Child’s play. 

Carol opens her eyes. Her legs still work, so she stretches them out, checking for bites, scratches, but there are none. Swaying, she manages to stumble to her feet.

There’s a flattened trail of underbrush in front of her. Uneven strips of grass and broken twigs. She thinks maybe it’s from a walker struggle, but then she remembers Rick and his gun making contact with the side of her head. 

Fear jolts her.

She presses forward, searching for the location of the sound. The flattened trail guides her over to a small shed. Rusted tools splay across the grass. It smells faintly of gasoline. 

She braces herself on the side of the shed and rounds the corner. A dull throbbing sensation radiates through her skull but she keeps inching forward until she reaches a clearing. The scene there makes her stop short. 

Crouching, Rick straddles Daryl, hitting him over and over. Daryl’s barely fighting. One of his knees is bent up, but the rest of him lies limp. Probably exhausted. There’s no telling how long she was out or how long they’ve been fighting.

There’s blood all over both of them. She spots Rick’s gun on the ground several feet away.

“Rick, stop it!” 

Her voice sounds clotted, like it’s someone else’s. Rick hesitates. 

“Get off him.”

But he doesn’t. He won’t. There’s no way he’s giving this up so easily, she can tell by his body language. His shoulders are hunched. He breathes heavily. “He was gonna come at me, Carol. Abe said he was goin’ on about it.”  
Carol advances as quietly as possible. She’s still a little woozy, but the pain in her head has eased somewhat. Her mind feels less fuzzy. She tries to keep the gun in her periphery. “When? Where?”

Rick takes a deep breath. Three times now he’s gone into the woods and come back without one of their own; Sofia. Shane. Daryl. Carol inches forward. Her hands shake. She kneels and grabs the gun.

“Last night,” Rick says. “In the mess hall.”

Daryl wasn’t at the mess hall last night. She knows because she was with him. They stayed in the guard tower until dark and the air got so cold it hurt her skin. She tucks the gun into her jeans near the small of her back, out of sight. “Did you follow us out here?”

He stiffens, turns. “He hasn’t been right since he got back. You said so yourself.”

“He’d never do anything bad.”

Rick glares. “He already has.” 

Carol is trembling all over now. Her body feels like it did that day back in the grove with the pecans crunching underfoot and the sound of the tall grasses swaying in the wind. She was not her own then. Not now, either. So much these days she looks at herself from a place beyond her body. “Let’s just go home.”

“I’m gonna finish this,” he says. “That’s what me and you do. We finish things.”

She swallows as tears threaten. Steps closer. “You don’t have to. Leave him.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Rick,” she says, and lays a hand on his back. He’s sweating and the heat of his skin has dampened his long sleeved shirt. Beneath him, Daryl’s eyes flicker to hers, a deep gash splitting his left eyebrow. Carol looks away. She forces her hand wander up to Rick’s neck and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “He’s as good as dead,” she whispers. “Come home with me. I’ll make you something to drink.”

“No. You know I can’t leave it like this. Not anymore.”

She tenses. Panic floods her body but before she can do anything, Rick’s moving, balling his fist up. He hits Daryl twice in rapid succession and the sound of bones—ribs—breaking cracks the silence. Stifled wheezing. He raises his hand again, knuckles clenched so hard they turn white, when Daryl reaches out and stabs the end of one of his arrows into Rick’s calf. 

A howl. Rick curses and stumbles forward, rage branching across his face. He grabs his knife.

“Stop!” she shouts, but he’s not going to stop. He’ll never stop. He’ll push until either Daryl’s dead or he’s dead or all three of them. Carol grabs the gun from her jeans. “Leave him alone,” she begs. “Rick!”

“Back off!” 

But he’s gone. There’s no reaching him anymore. He’ll do what we was always going to do; he’ll play her hand. And once all of the cards are out there’s only one move she can make. 

Rick moves in over Daryl again. He moves the knife towards Daryl’s neck, poised over the carotid artery to bleed him out. 

Carol raises the gun.

In the very beginning, she stayed with Rick because she wasn’t strong enough. It was a different world. He was her guide; he showed them what they needed to do to live. She needed him back then, they all did. 

But not anymore.

She aims. Fires. 

The shot barely makes a sound, muffled by the silencer, but she sees the blood. The red and the grey matter as the bullet rips a hole clean through Rick’s skull. He stiffens, his body jerking awkwardly, before his muscles slacken and he falls. 

The clearing goes quiet. 

It’s just the sway of the trees and the spring breeze.

The gun drops from her hand. 

Carol bends over. Can’t breathe. Dizziness washes over her and she sits down, feeling the cool earth beneath her. Clouds. Chirping. The budding leaves on the trees. She pictures Judith eating cookies at the countertop. Carl cleaning his knife and laughing, the sheriff’s hat sitting on the kitchen table. 

Her ears are ringing. She fights with her own breath, trying to rein it back under control but it spins out from inside her, hard and sorrowful as the day she lost her little girl.

“Carol.”

She sits. Forces her breathing to calm. For a moment she considers grabbing the gun again and bringing it to her own temple. 

“Carol?” Daryl’s sitting up now, wiping some of the blood on his face off with a rag. He leans in, his elbows resting on his knees. He wheezes. More than anything else, the sound of him in pain is what brings her back.

She brushes off her jeans, shuddering to her feet. “Don’t move.”

She steps around Daryl to kneel over Rick’s body. His eyes are open, his mouth, too. There are bits of dirt in his hair and his cheeks are red, deceptively life-like, though when she touches his wrist there isn’t a pulse.

He’s dead. Rick is dead. 

“You ain’t gotta say anything,” Daryl says. His words are muffled by his split and swollen lips. “I’ll tell ’em I did it.”  
She swallows. Her throat stings. Her eyes, too.

How stupid she was to think Daryl was the dangerous one. Rick.

Carol looks at the dead man on the ground and the nearly dead man sitting in front of her, all pasted with mud and pine needles, leaves stuck to their pants. The sky beyond them is the most beautiful shade of blue.

Slowly, she tucks the gun back into her pants. She leans forward to examine Daryl’s ribs, feeling the splintered bone. “No,” she says. Her throat is still tight but she’s not crying. “Let me tell them. Don’t say anything.”

Her eyes flicker up and their gazes meet. He’s looking at her the way he used to, like the way he did in Atlanta when they went looking for Beth, his eyes all soft and warm and crinkled in the corner. But that’s not who he is now.

That’s not any of them anymore. 

+++

They some walkers go at the body before taking it back. Carol tells the camp it was an accident. They were all caught off-guard. She tells the group that they should never be caught off guard. There are still dangers and just because they have a wall doesn’t mean the world won’t still sink its teeth into them. 

Everyone buys it. 

She’s Carol, after all, and since Rick is gone, they now look to her for what lies to believe. 

+++

A little over a month later, Carl moves in with Maggie and Glenn. He says it’s because he can’t stand looking at the house, the rooms, seeing where his father walked. Carol knows it’s partly because the boy can’t stand to look at Daryl. At her. 

Hell, she can barely stand to look at herself. She can barely look at the safe zone walls. The metal and sheetrock and iron beams, the rust that grows on the bolts, the weeds burgeoning up from the ground. 

These walls have made her weak. 

“You’re different,” Daryl tells her after they’ve fucked, and the sound of his breathing cascades around the basement room that Rick designated him so long ago. “You don’t laugh like you used to.”

She looks up at the ceiling. It’s cooler down here than the rest of the house. The air smells of musk and earth and faint gunpowder—the smell of Daryl. He’s made it his in so little time. It’s a skill all of them have now. Taking things that aren’t theirs and remaking them as their own. 

Carol still sleeps in the room she shared with Rick. She likes being able to see the neighbors from her window; being able to hear when Judith is stirring or paddling around in the middle of the night. 

“I have to go upstairs,” she says. “Check on Judith.”

She pulls out from beneath the heat of the covers and slips her clothes back on. Her skin smells like Daryl. She never bathes after they fuck. She likes the feel of him to linger on her body. 

“Wake me up before you leave for that run tomorrow.” 

He stares up at her from the bed, his mouth closed around a lit cigarette. In the dim lighting, the burn marks from that day are barely visible, but when she runs her hands over him, over his back and hands, and his chin, she can always feel them. 

They remind her of that day. Of Rick. 

“I will,” he says. Smoke blooms around his face. “Who am I takin’? Abe or Sasha?”

“Abe, please. I need Sasha here tomorrow.”

“For what?”

“Rifle training. All the kids are going to learn.”

Daryl inhales. His eyes run the length of her body once, then go back to her face. “You call the shots now, huh?”

She stares at him.

“No hidin’ nothin’ anymore.”

A prickle of heat touches the back of her neck. Like an old ghost. Carol rubs the feeling away and then goes to the bed, bending over to place a soft kiss on Daryl’s forehead. “Sleep,” she says. “That’s an order.”

He grabs her wrist as she pulls away, tugging her back into him. Kisses her hard. All teeth and tongue and heat. He tastes like cigarettes but she doesn’t care. It’s Daryl. He’s really here. Really with her, just like she always wanted. 

Judith’s upstairs, sleeping soundly. The house is quiet. The walls are strong. She will wake tomorrow and people will look at her for direction. 

A year and a half ago, the three of them stumbled out into the wilderness. The wrong man came back with her, and now that’s been set right. Things are as they should be. She should feel better. 

This is what she wanted, isn’t it? 

Carol crosses the room to the stairs. 

Isn’t it?


End file.
